As is obvious in the postings of this thread, the volume of words expended on speculation about smoothbore musket v rifle in the Civil War runs to Carl Sagan numbers. I have seen ordinarily mild mannered friends get red in the face & raise their voices, smoothbore, rifle, smoothbore, rifle, smoothbore, rifle & on & on. I am quite sure that this has been the case from the patenting of a rifling tool by English gunsmith Arnold Rotsipen in 1635. By the 1850's, European gov'ts had adopted rifled & discarded their smoothbore muskets. (Cadmus Wilcox,
Rifles & Rifle Practice: An Elementary Treatise Upon the Theory of Rifle Firing. 1859.
A review of the facts would seem to be in order & answer the question:
"What is the history of rifles superseding smoothbore muskets?"
Joshua Shaw obtained a patent for a fulminate of mercury cap in 1822. He received an $18,000 prize from Congress in 1847. Quite a princely sum in those days. The flintlock's days were numbered. In 1824 British Captain John Norton solved the relatively slow loading of rifles by designing an enlongated bullet. French captain Claude-Etienne Minnie' in 1847 created his self named cylindro-conical bullet. The first army wide adoption of the rifle was under King Louis-Philippe of France in 1849.
British General Francis Rawdon Chesney stated that the elongated bullet had
"the advantage of encountering less resistance with an equal mass; consequently any piece in which it may be used, whether a musket or a great gun [cannon], will produce a shock equal to that of a considerably larger calibre, but having a spherical projectile." Wounds inflicted by elongated rifle projectiles were many times more destructive than those of round balls. Both bullets would expand upon contact with bone, but the shock of the rifled bullet was magnitudes greater, which accounts for its greater lethality.
In 1854, James H. Burton, Acting Master Armorer of the Harpers Ferry armory, resolved problems associated with Minnie's design by inventing a cheaper, improved expanding round in 1854. The combination of Burton's round, improved cartridges & caps would be used by both sides during the Civil War.
European armies engaged in a number of tests to compare the efficacy of smoothbore & rifled muskets.
On average, the rifled musket was about four times as accurate when compared with a smoothbore musket. At 250 yards, rifles were effective at twice the range of smoothbores. "Army Rifles", Scientific American #5 July 20, 1861 p 41
Testing showed that the type of rifling produced dramatic disparities in effective range.
Standard issue models were effective at 500 yards, marksmen's models twice that at 1,000 yards. In tests done in 1857, a Whitworth rifle was able to penetrate 33 planks of wood. The superiority of the rifle over the smoothbore was no longer in doubt.
One of the curious differences between rifle & smoothbores is that the friction of the rifling reduced the muzzle velocity of the rifle by about 50% to 500 feet per second. That had ballistic implications. Because of that & the dramatic increase in range, it was no longer enough to just have soldiers level their muskets & fire.
The first adaptation to the arcing trajectory of rifled bullets was to train soldiers to place their thumbnail on the barrel & use it as a back sight.
In 1854, the first School of Musketry was established at Hythe in England. Cadres of men from every army corps were detailed there & then returned to their units to train others. Skeptics dismissed this as useless because battles would still be fought at close range with the issue settled by the bayonet. As you can see, it was ever thus. Jomini, the leading military theorists of his age, was positively dismissive of the rifle's potential.
Be that as it may, General Francis Rawdon Chesney stated that with the adoption of rifled muskets it would "no longer be possible for one army to throw out clouds either of mounted or light infantry... without being opposed by similar means."
Artillery would no longer be placed in the line of battle because the effective range of rifled muskets was equal to cannon. In Civil War combat, Chesney was proved correct.
Tests done at Hythe led him to the conclusion that direct cavalry charges were no longer possible. It was simple math.
Field Marshal Colin Campbell claimed that a regiment armed with rifled muskets would be able to unleash 10,000 rounds against a cavalry charge that began at the usual 1,000 yards. Due to their shorter range, troops armed with Brown Bess muskets only fired six volleys at very close range. He also pointed out that a British square had never been broken, but the implication of the increased range of the rille was sobering.
The Crimean War (1853-56) was the first instance where the smoothbore musket v the rifle put to the test. Author Wellesly, the first Duke of Wellington recommended that rifles become standard issue in the British army. In 1855 his decision was justified when rifles were employed "with destructive effect upon Russians in the Crimea, who... were still armed with old smooth-bore musket."
In the Battle of Alma (1854) skirmish tactics by men armed with rifles inflicted 2 to 1 casualties on Russians. Marshal von Moltke, in his analysis of the battle attributed the Russian defeat on their reliance on Napoleonic bayonet charges & lack of rifles. There were still those who believed that Zouave tactics involving quick rushes could overcome the rifle's lethality at range. Men who had been on the receiving end of the British skirmish tactics had a different view of the subject.
"A perfect cloud of riflemen, hid in a thick brushwood, opened a very violent & very accurate fire against our artillery at the distance of 800 paces... it was more the fire of rifled small arms than that of artillery of the enemy which reached our artillerymen, of whom the greater part were killed or wounded."
Russian General Todleben
As the postings in this thread indicate, the smoothbore v rifle debate continued. However,
beginning with the Prussian breachloading needle rifle in 1851, every army in Europe had adopted rifles by 1858. In 1854, Major Alfred Mordecai of the U.S. Ordnance Department traveled to Europe at the head of a commission that included George McClellan. As a result of the commission's report, Secretary of War Jefferson Davis orders intensive tests to evaluate the merits of rifled muskets. It was discovered that the Burton designed projectile was the best overall design.
All of the rifle projectiles were scoring 30-80% hits at ranges where round balls from smoothbore muskets failed to hit the target entirely.
Head to head, at 400 yards, smoothbores had a dismal 4.5% accuracy rating compared with 52.5% of rifles. At 300 yards, rifles were achieving 74% accuracy. Another interesting head to head result compared the Enfield v Springfield rifles. The Springfield was able to penetrate an iron target at 2,400 yards. Due to acknowledged quality control problems, the Springfield was found to be superior to the Enfield. "Rifled Muskets in Oho." Scientific American, July 1861.
Evident by postings on this forum, debate about the ability of soldiers to take advantage of the rifle's range has raged on unabated since the Civil War. An 1861 Scientific American article pointed out that
"any western youth can beat nine out of then [eastern soldiers] in off hand practice... [poor marksmen were] as likely to end the balls flying over the heads of the foes or into the ground not 20 rods off, as into the ranks of the enemy."
On the eve of the Civil War in 1859, American arsenals held a total of 503,644 smoothbore muskets & 106,598 rifles & converted rifled muskets. The converted flintlocks were "so much weakened in the process of alteration, as to become almost as dangerous when discharged to the person at the breech as the one in front of the muzzle" At the early stages of the war, only 10% of Confederate recruits carried rifles. Austrian Lorenz & Mississippi models predominated.
The smoothbores were characterized as "curious relics of a more unenlightened age [only suitable for museums.]" It would not be until 1863 that rifles became ubiquitous on both sides. From that point onward, the hundreds of thousands of rifles manufactured in the U.S. & England became standard issue. The age of the smoothbore musket was over.
Note:
Whatever the supposed efficacy of smoothbore muskets in the Civil War may have been, nobody was manufacturing new ones. With rare exceptions, antique smoothbores were joyfully discarded & replaced by rifles. The experience of Bragg's infantrymen who carried the hammer of their 'curious relics' in their pockets into combat at the Battle of Stones River is one of the issues we discuss with visitors at Stones River N.B. I carry a .69 ball found on the battlefield along with various Minnie' balls in my haversack to show visitors what the ammunition used during the battle looks like. It isn't an exaggeration to state that the Battle of Stones River was the last great smoothbore battle.
Stones River N.B. Living History Volunteers deploy a cannon at the
position held by the Chicago Board of Trade Battery December 31, 1862.
Confederate Infantry armed with smoothbore muskets could have only watched from the tree line.
The extreme effective range of their muskets was only to the tour road perceptible above the heads of the mounted men.
The field was carpeted with the bodies of the men who attempted to dislodge the C.B.T. battery & the Pioneer Brigade armed with rifles that supported them.
Another theme of our programs is to discuss the fact that Union cannon on the Nashville Pike were impervious to counter fire from Confederate infantry armed with smoothbores when they attempted to cross the cotton field & achieve victory on the first day of the battle. At Stones River, the short range & lack of accuracy of smoothbore muskets was not an abstract academic exercise. It was a life & death tactical reality.
Ordinarily, in non-lock down years, we would be preparing for our Tullahoma Campaign programs in June. Even muzzle loading rifles were obsolete when confronted by Wilder's Brigade armed with Spencer repeating rifles. That was the beginning of the end of muzzle loaders of all kinds, let alone museum pieces like Napoleonic smoothbores.
Cemetery of Confederate Unknowns.
Beech Grove, Tennessee May 5th 2020 by the author.
The evolution from smoothbore muskets to repeating rifles is a narrative that I am very familiar with. Only a short drive from my home is a poignant relic of the Battle of Hoover's Gap. Bate's Confederate infantry repeatedly attempted to dislodge Wilder's Brigade armed with seven shot Spencer Repeating Rifles which had blitzed through the narrow gap in the hills south of Murfeesboro TN on the morning of June 24, 1863. Bewildered by the volume of fire that poured down on them without letup, many of Bate's veterans raised their muzzle loading rifles over their heads & were allowed to enter Wilder's line. Those who were not so fortunate were given soldier's graves where they lay. After the war, a local farmer gathered them up & placed their remains here along side a veteran of the Continental Line & early pioneers. The cemetery is atop a low hill adjacent to the Beech Grove / Bell Buckle exit on I-24 about 15 miles southeast of Murfreesboro. The access to the cemetery is up a steep drive on Confederate Cemetery Road.